Solo

Fear is many times the most influential reason for us to do something or worst to stop us doing it.

Since the return of the Star Wars franchise to movie theaters in December 2015, the three films released so far have brought in over $2 billion domestically and over $4.45 billion worldwide. Each has cracked $1 billion globally and all three rank within the top 25 all-time worldwide.

“Rogue One” was a story we didn’t need, why do we want to know every detail of what happened before?

Then just last year we had the big one, the big disturbance in the force, maybe Disney listened and wanted to change things and give people a new story.
When they released “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” oh my god it was different and not what people expected, and fans went nuts.
They went nuts because it was not like what they expected, the story jumped over details, for example, who was Snoke?
The same people that complained that we didn’t need to know about every story there wanted to know the details about that one.

And why? The point was that he didn’t matter the big bad guy is there in front of you, Kylo Ren is who you need to focus, he was there all the time and just like Snoke, we underestimated him.

So yes people were not happy with Star Wars, and again they feared to be losing what they loved since their childhood, they especially resented Kathleen Kennedy, the women that made Disney 4.45 billion dollars after three movies, so fans got together and started a boycott, #boycottsolo was at full swing.

The idea was to force Disney to give the fans the Star Wars they all wanted and get Kathleen fired, but I believe they overlooked something.

First, when “Force Awakens” came out there was a boycott about Rey, having a female in the title role was something many people were not happy, also having Finn an African American in the other leading role was the last reason they needed to boycott it.
Force Awakens broke every record out there and its now the second highest box office movie ever made, so boycotting didn’t work then.

Second, believe it or not, the fans that are not happy with Star Wars and will not see “Solo” because of this boycott are a minority, we listen to a lot of noise because usually, it is the negative voices that will raise up and make the most prominent noise.
At the end of the day, there are many people excited about “Solo” and pre-sales of tickets are even superior to “Black Panther“.

Finally, no matter what this group of people do, this franchise will always be a lucrative one even if they don’t break the 1 billion dollar barrier.
With a budget of 250 million, it needs to top at least 500 million to break even, might seem to be a lot but it’s less than half of what “Rogue One” did. After that it will make in streaming, DVDs, merchandising and what it already got in advertisements deals makes it profitable.

So that is why this boycott will not have the results that this group is expecting, in my opinion, it will not even do that much of a difference looking at all the signs.

So “Solo” will make money, but fear is working in other ways that for me are more important for us to analyze.

Fear is like a virus, and at the moment I have my concerns, that this virus will destroy something I love.

The fear is coming from everywhere, and we need to address every side of it;

Disney:
In March 2018, after Ron Howard took charge of the project he had to reshot around 70% of the film, we will never know why.
We will never know what the movie would look like before but we can almost for sure say that they feared that Solo would not feel like a Star Wars movie.

Would that be bad? Well in the eyes of Disney especially after what happened with “The Last Jedi” they felt people didn’t want something new and different.

But one thing is for sure in many parts of this movie it felt like they are trying to please every single fan out there and it feels cut and paste of different toned films.
Also being a movie about an outlaw it felt the creative team just played it safe, they had the chance to break the rules, to have fun but it all felt too contained and painted inside the lines.

The Cast:
Being Han Solo after Harrison Ford is not a hard job, it’s straight out impossible. There is no way anyone can be Harrison Ford or replace him, so the pressure on Alden Ehrenreich was impossible to handle.

On top of that pressure he had to do this job in this decade, a decade where everyone has a voice, that everyone can go on the internet and say whatever they want, people are judged even before they can show what they can do.

Heath Ledger had that problem when given the part of the Joker, and Michael Keaton when he was Batman, but especially Keaton didn’t have to face the amount of scrutiny that actors have to do today.

It was all over the news that Ehrenreich had acting coaches given to him to be able to do the part better, so what? Don’t professional athletes have coaches?
Music superstars have vocal coaches, so why not an actor doing one of the most iconic parts in movie history.

Again fear didn’t help the cast to be able to do their job and enjoy doing it.

The Fans:
This is the side where most of the fear originates, and fans feel they need to get the Star Wars they believe it is the real one.
They want something that they imagine in their heads, and if there is a story that they don’t care they assume, there is no story there.

The most common critic I have heard was that we don’t need this story, ok we agree, we don’t need this story to enjoy the character of Han, but what do we lose by having it if its good?

We didn’t need “10 Cloverfield Lane” but it was brilliant, we didn’t need many of the remakes we got in the last couple of years, but once in a while we get amazing ones like “It”, some that just turn out to be loads of fun like “Jumanji” so why not a cool “Solo” movie?

And this is the part that bothered me, I saw “Solo”, and I believe it could have been one of the best Star Wars movie ever made.

The movie is fun, visually we see stuff we never saw before, the action is excellent and even being in space and just mindblowing it feels very grounded.
We have terrific characters and some fantastic performances and a plot full of references to the movies we loved that doesn’t feel forced.

Alden Ehrenreich is excellent as Han Solo, he made Han character is own, not trying to be exactly like him but adapt trades that we will recognize, and that is not only easier for him to do justice to this character but also the one that feels more realistic and organic.
Han in this is maybe 20 years younger than the guy we saw in the original trilogy, that means many more things will happen to change him to the Han we all love, so it feels natural.

Donald Glover is impressive as Lando Calrissian, again there was so much noise about this character, there was all this thing about his sexuality and many reports about him flirting with Han and Bla Bla Bla.
I for one don’t see the big deal and don’t believe at any point there was an effort to fill a quota or turn him in something that does not fit his personality.
He his a guy that loves to take care of himself, loves is capes and its a bit of a metrosexual, in a way reminds me of Prince, and is there anyone cooler than Prince?

We have another robot that steals the show and shows some unique motivations that are interesting to see, L3-37 will be another great addition to the robots of Star Wars.

Emilia Clarke was just what she needed to be to make Han character grow and complete his arc, she was manipulative, sexy, innocent and played her cards to survive and amazingly she made us believe in each of her sides as genuine even when they opposed themselves.

Visually I think this is one of the coolest Star wars movies ever, In Rogue one we got a lot of the feeling of the star wars universe from the ground. In this one we got the grittier side, we got to see the real results of what the empire was doing to the universe, just that point was interesting enough for this movie to have a place.

So what is wrong with it, how did all these fears hurt this movie?

The length for me was the biggest issue, and not because it was just long, “Infinity war” is longer but there isn’t anything there that we could cut out, everything is needed to tell the story.
In “Solo” much of the movie felt it’s trying to make everyone happy, it feels they trying to get everything that people like from the different movies into one, this causes many times the film to fell repetitive.
Every time you think it’s near a conclusion, there is another layer added to it and just like “The Last Jedi” there are things there that don’t add much to tell the story.

Then there are the fears of not having enough to link this movie to all the others, there are references, and especially one last cameo that I am sure will raise many questions regarding the movie’s timeline and I believe it could have been done better.

And the final mistake was not admitting the movie had problems, everyone knew it, and because of it, there was no time to market as it should.
There was significant competition around it, so why keep the release date?
For me it was the simple fact they didn’t want to look like they didn’t have confidence in the movie, but why not move it to December, a spot that became known as the Star Wars month, why not give the new director more time and give breathing room to show the fans that the movie had potential.

With all that said I can now give my review because I watched the movie, and yes that is the only way you can have an opinion, love it or hate it you have to watch it first.

People that didn’t saw it will give many of the ratings in IMDB, rotten tomatoes and other sites, and that will only make any pertinent critics be washed away as people complaining for no reason, and that will hurt the future of the franchise.

Star Wars should not be loved blinded, we don’t have to like everything just because it belongs to the universe we love, but we need to have an opinion based on facts even if they are our own.

So SOLO is fun, visually amazing, introduces us to some aspects of our favorite characters that we never saw before and introduces us to new ones that are really cool, it has a fell of the “Magnificent Seven” that on its own it’s fantastic.
It is well written and with a great script that needed to have been revised to cut out the fat.

With all of it said the most important thing is that while I watch it, I was always with a smile on my face.